On Thursday night, it seemed as though another loss was in the offing for the Detroit Pistons, as they had to face the team with the best record in the NBA, the Boston Celtics, to try and snap their 27-game losing streak. However, Cade Cunningham made sure that the Pistons were not going down without a fight. In fact, Cunningham had a scorcher of a first half, scoring 22 points on 9-13 shooting to give Detroit a 66-47 lead into the intermission.

However, the Celtics boast the league's best record for a reason. It didn't take long for Boston to erase that 19-point deficit, and the Pistons, having been unfamiliar with how to protect leads seeing as they've been playing from behind for most of the season, saw their hard-earned lead dissipate in a flash.

This, Cade Cunningham thought, was the Pistons' ultimate undoing, as they were simply unable to weather the Celtics barrage that was coming, one way or another.

“Tough one. We put ourselves in a good spot to win that game and just had too large of a lapse in the 3rd quarter,” Cunningham said in his postgame presser, per Bobby Manning of CLNS Media.

Nonetheless, as heartbreaking as it may be to see their much-improved effort against the Celtics end up in a familiar result, it cannot be understated how much this solid performance could do for Cade Cunningham and the Pistons' confidence moving forward.

“So every game we should be able to fight teams and impose our will on them. We did that early on,” Cunningham said, via ESPN. “But there’s a lot of growth, and something we can learn from and definitely take to the next game.”

At this point, the Pistons are looking like a team that's making huge strides, with the ignominy of their historic losing streak lighting a huge fire underneath them. They were competitive against the Brooklyn Nets during the other day too, and they made the Celtics sweat, which not many teams can boast about.

With a game against the Toronto Raptors, a team that will be on the second night of a back-to-back on Saturday, the Pistons could be well on their way to getting back on the winning track.